Inhabiting mobility: The boat trip, the objects and the experience of mobility in the archipelago of Quinchao, Chiloé (Chile)

Abstract

Based on a mobile fieldwork carried out in the archipelago of Quinchao, Chile, this paper seeks to understand archipelagic mobility as a multiplicity of relations between the environment, the objects and the trip’s materialities. With this aim, a mobile ethnography was carried out, observing the pier of Achao and the islands of Llingua, Apiao, Chaulinec, Alao and Quenac, as well as a “shadowing” of the discontinuous and tactical experience of the trip of a Young inhabitant of the island of Alao. It will be demonstrated how the bodily experience of the trip is affected by places, performative natures and socio-technical assemblages, as a result of the relation between mobility, modernity, and spatial isolation in the island of Chiloé.